Hong Kong Insurer Expands Into Digital Assets

Japan’s HashPort Group Raises $8.5M in Funding RoundHashPort, a leading blockchain developer based in Japan, has successfully raised 1.2 billion Japanese yen (approximately $8.5 million) in a Series C funding round.The funding was secured through key investors, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), The University of Tokyo, Edge Capital Partners, and Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. With this latest infusion of capital, HashPort’s total funding has now reached an impressive 2 billion yen (about $14.2 million).Global expansion plansThe announcement, which was made on Friday, revealed that these fresh funds will be instrumental in driving HashPort’s global expansion plans, particularly in the face of complex regulatory environments. The company aims to fortify its business operations and establish a robust compliance management system, essential for navigating the intricate web of global regulations.At the core of HashPort’s ecosystem are two significant components. The first is its namesake blockchain-related consulting and system solution, which has gained substantial recognition in Japan. The second is HashPalette, a public chain specially designed for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tapping into the booming NFT market. Additionally, HashPort is set to unveil an exciting metaverse game called The Land Elf Crossing in the upcoming fourth quarter.Coincheck collaborationHashPort’s previous collaboration with Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck garnered considerable attention. Together, they launched Japan’s first initial exchange offering (IEO), which raised an impressive 22.45 billion yen (approximately $160 million) in commitments for the Palette (PLT) token. As a testament to the success of this venture, PLT Place, the official NFT marketplace of Palette Chain, now boasts over 370,000 users.President Seihaku Yoshida expressed HashPort’s future ambitions, revealing plans to cooperate with Expo 2025, a highly anticipated event scheduled to take place in Osaka. HashPort aims to develop digital wallets and digital passports linked to soulbound tokens (SBTs) for Expo 2025. With an estimated 28 million visitors expected to attend the expo, the company sees this as a historic opportunity to introduce Web3 technology to a broader audience.Soulbound tokensIn December 2022, one of HashPort’s current investors, SMBC, joined forces with the company to explore the potential applications of SBTs. Proposed by Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin, SBTs represent the characteristics or reputation of individuals or entities, much like the concept of soulbound items in the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft.As part of that collaboration, SMBC and HashPort were discussing the possibility of creating a “safe and secure Web3 economic zone.” No further details were given beyond that, but the idea may have been along the lines of creating something like Cyberport, an innovative digital community which has been created in Hong Kong, featuring over 1,900 start-ups and technology companies.The successful funding round marks a significant milestone for HashPort, providing the necessary financial resources to accelerate its expansion plans and drive innovation in the Web3 space. As the company continues to pioneer advancements in the blockchain and NFT sectors, its collaboration with Expo 2025 and ongoing exploration of SBTs showcase the company’s efforts in attempting to contribute towards shaping the future of decentralized technologies.

MANTRA, a real-world asset (RWA) layer one blockchain built on Cosmos, recently outlined its vision for the on-chain financial ecosystem, outlining that it plans to acquire licensing in the Middle East and Asia as part of its efforts to expand. In a press release published on Chainwire on March 14, the company outlined that it has applied for licensing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in an effort to pave the way for MANTRA to target a global clientele who want to harness the potential of RWA asset tokenization. Issuing and trading tokenized RWAsAt the core of the Hong Kong-headquartered project’s offering lies its layer one blockchain, aptly named MANTRA Chain. The network is designed to streamline the issuance and trading of tokenized RWAs. Having established this technological product base, the company is now on a mission to onboard financial institutions and commercial entities with an interest in asset tokenization. With teams stationed in Hong Kong and the UAE, MANTRA has honed a full understanding of the shifting regulatory landscapes in pivotal regions. By securing its inaugural financial licenses in the UAE, MANTRA is aiming to take a slice of market share in the swiftly evolving RWA sector across the Middle East and Asia. The overarching goal for 2024 is to tokenize a diverse spectrum of assets, spanning real estate, private market funds, equity, art and treasuries.Photo by Sigmund on UnsplashIn an X social media post, MANTRA Founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin outlined that the company is already engaging with institutions and partners in the private sector. Mullin stated: “MANTRA is actively collaborating with real-world institutions and partners, including real estate, private market funds, private equity, the art sector, and treasuries, among others, to help bring these traditional asset classes onchain.” Mullin claims that the current crypto market capitalization of around $2 trillion is just a drop in the ocean by comparison with the potential that exists in the tokenization of RWAs and in unlocking the RWA economy. Hong Kong licensingAlongside the Middle East, Asia is the other target market for the company. Mullin suggested that Asian countries are already preparing for this fundamental shift, having developed RWA regulations. Last November, it emerged that Hong Kong was setting out a regulatory roadmap in respect of RWA tokenization. In February 2023 the Chinese autonomous territory achieved a first-of-its-kind tokenized green bond issuance.With that, the company’s home base of Hong Kong will also be central to its efforts to acquire relevant licensing. In recent weeks, MANTRA claims to have made significant progress in decentralizing its network, garnering validator support on a more broadly distributed basis. The project is expected to launch its final testnet, dubbed “Hongbai,” shortly. MANTRA is aiming to emerge as the pioneer RWA layer one blockchain with the capability to ensure real-world regulatory compliance. By expediting the adoption of tokenized RWAs, the project suggests that there’s an RWA economy value unlock potential of $16 trillion with its regulatory-ready blockchain being positioned to benefit from that. The network is gearing to offer a compliant framework, so that traditional finance (TradFi) companies can seamlessly transition to and harness asset tokenization and blockchain solutions, propelling global RWA expansion. 

Singaporean Researchers Devise More Effective DAO VotingResearchers at the Singapore University of Social Sciences have come up with a more efficient governance model for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).Photo by Shubham Dhage on UnsplashDAO governance reviewThe scientists presented their work via a paper titled “Voting Schemes in DAO Governance,” which was published earlier this week. The paper is due to appear in the Annual Review of Fintech in due course.The research paper initially sets out with a review of the different forms of voting currently used to affect DAO governance in the various early stage projects that are already up and running. Having taken a deep dive into existing approaches, the research team of Qinxu Ding, Weibiao Xu, Zhiguo Wang and David Kuo Chuen Lee decided that they could go one better themselves.Their review encompassed eight current approaches including the following: token-based quorum voting, knowledge-extractable voting, conviction voting and reputation-based voting. Each voting scheme was then evaluated based on the following factors:Efficiency: An assessment of the speed at which proposals are selected and approved.Fairness: Each voter should have equal rights to vote.Scalability: The degree to which storage, computation and communication needs can be adjusted relative to the number of voters.Robustness: An assessment of the relative resistance of the voting scheme to attacks and collusion.Incentive Schemes: The extent to which DAO members are motivated to vote.Following on from that analysis, the scientists put forward a hypothetical voting mechanism with design considerations relative to fully decentralized and permissionless DAO governance. When it came to ratings, the holographic consensus approach scored highest, with a “high” rating in the categories of efficiency, fairness and robustness, dropping down to medium when it came to scalability. None of the other approaches came close.In trying to go one better, the team took the holographic consensus approach and set out to create their own hypothetical voting mechanism based on this model. As evidenced from the paper, they tried to effect improvements to this approach:“We know that the downside of the conviction voting mechanism is that it takes time to approve an urgent proposal. To address this concern, we introduce a blind betting mechanism: each member could choose whether to bet on any proposals with a certain number of their tokens.”The researcher’s hypothetical model allows stakeholders to gamble their tokens on the likelihood of a proposal passing or failing. The logic with this approach, they claim, is that it would speed up the governance process, while making it more robust at the same time.In concluding remarks, the researchers acknowledged that all approaches were not without their pros and cons. They point out that the further development of DAOs shouldn’t be confined to a static organizational future. While they believe that their own hypothetical scheme is in theory superior, they acknowledge that it too has flaws. With that, the realities of implementing it in the real world may be a challenge.